Frank Allen Goad, who passed away June 1 at the age of 80, was one of the South Coast’s major artists too few knew. No doubt a writing teacher would want to rap her student on the knuckles if said student created a character with the doubly obvious name Frank Goad. The funny part is that Frank Goad did exist, even if he was quite a character, and was perhaps most himself being frank while goading people. But what else would we want from our artists but brutal honesty? Frank loved to tell the tale of his favorite rejection note. He would quote the disapproving editor: “Dear Mr. Goad, I think I know what you’re trying to do … and I don’t like it.”
And there was so much art to like/dislike, even if going to his home and watching a naked canvas stare his muse down for weeks at a time made clear that his creativity was far from effortless, despite all the avenues in which he expressed himself. Powerful, gestural, emotional, his paintings are vividly thrilling and often capture the Santa Barbara he loved — and felt a tad betrayed by, but ain’t that Santa Barbara? — with typical larger-than-life force. It didn’t hurt that many canvases were five-and-a-half feet by five-and-a-half feet, challenging you to have a house big enough to hold them. His work was exhibited from our Santa Barbara Museum of Art to the United Arts Club in Dublin, Ireland.
There was also his pioneering audio work beginning in the 1960s. Frank played with tape manipulation and performance and timing and panning in ways ahead of his time. His out-there recordings would often get presented live, too, most spectacularly in A Legal Assembly at a packed UCSB’s Campbell Hall in May 1970, just a few months after illegal assemblies led to the Bank of America torching in I.V. That night even had Rolling Stone in the house, and their story hailed Goad as a “freak genius.”
